updated 11:10 am EDT, Tue September 22, 2009

Fraction of Lightroom's audience, says Adobe

Apple's Aperture workflow software is losing significant traction with professional photographers, claims Adobe. Citing data gathered by the research firm InfoTrends, Adobe notes that in a 2009 survey, only 12.5 percent of photographers with Macs reported using Aperture for RAW files; by contrast, Adobe's Lightroom software was nearly four times as popular, at 44.4 percent. The figures represent a widening gap, as in 2007, only 26.6 percent chose Lightroom and 14.3 percent chose Aperture.

Amongst all photographers the 2009 numbers change to 37 percent for Lightroom and 6.3 percent for Aperture, a disparity explainable by the lack of a PC port of Aperture. The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in is a more popular option than either, at 57.9 percent; Adobe observes that in all cases, roughly 90 percent of photographers use Photoshop for image editing. Camera Raw's popularity has gradually slid from a 66.5 percent mark in 2007, a fact likely attributable to an increase in the use of workflow software in general.

Several misleading points in here...

First, Aperture is *not* an image editing program and I don't think that Apple ever claimed it was such. So I have Aperture and the CameraRaw plug-in installed because they do completely different things -- one enables me to manage my RAW files as a *library* (same is Lightroom) and make simple, non-destructive, basic adjustments, the other enables me to open files in Photoshop and make complex, sometimes-destructive, sophisticated adjustments.

Second, Apple *has* really screwed up the game with Aperture. Aperture 2.0 was released in early 2008 and hasn't received a major refresh since then, so it is looking decidedly aged by software terms. When your consumer application (i.e. iPhoto) has features (e.g. facial recognition, geo-tagging) that aren't available for your pro application then it's really time to get on the ball and release an update. They haven't even offered a glimpse of an Aperture 3.0!

Release and Neglect

They release an application with amazing potential and then they simply neglect the software and move on to other things. Eventually the software is eclipsed by software from other developers. This has happened over and over and over!

AppleWorks, ClarisCAD, MacPaint, MacWrite, MacWrite Pro, Claris Organizer...
Now it's looking as though we can add Aperture to the list.

Stopgap...

Perhaps Apple is neglecting Aperture conscientiously. Not that I agree with it, but at the time Aperture was released, it was one of a very few applications of its kind. Now that Adobe has stepped up perhaps Apple doesn't see the need to continue to develop this part of the market. Think of it kind of in the same respect as Safari--Apple probably didn't really WANT to get into the browser market (not a whole lot of money to be made there), but they really HAD to do it in order to keep IE from making the Mac a second class citizen on the web. Just my speculation...

It's Time for Aperture 3

Re: Release and Neglect

Bear in mind that they also don't aid themselves with their stupid insistence on secrecy. I guess on one hand you can never have 'vaporware' if you never promise anything, and people can't mock you for missing release dates if you never even mention a release until its ready to go. However, consumers/users like to know what's going on and where things are going. Especially with software that people use for their jobs.

Apple buying Claris (or bringing them back into the fold, whatever you call it) was a stupid act that ended up killing a slew of good/great products. Claris Emailer - dead. Claris Organizer - dead. MacWrite/MacDraw/etc - Dead. AppleWorks fizzled for a version, but it then died to. Maybe if they didn't spend all their time trying to convert it to OpenDoc so Apple could have a program that used that 'great new paradigm!' that no one else was using...

However, I would argue that MacPaint and MacWrite lived far longer lives than could be expected, and were really made so people would have something to do on their macs back in 1984.

But don't limit this to software. Apple does a great job of making hardware and then letting it sit idle for who knows how long, making people wonder whether any updates are planned or are they going to kill the thing (for example, xRaid).

From Lightroom, to Aperture, now back again?

I opted to try switching to Aperture at the beginning of the year but I'm starting to look over the fence again at Lightroom with it's up to date editing features. One of my original interests in switching was because I needed more than what iPhoto offered plus the easy integration with pushing photos to Apple TV & iPod directly from Aperture.

I might have to look at moving back to Lightroom and using iPhoto as the photo gateway for ATV/iPod going forward though...

Marketshare

Well, it seems to me that market share would define whether or not there was a critical mass for Aperture.

Release one of Aperture was a piece of c*** - so bad it was ludicrous, and probably one of Apple's worst releases. Subsequent releases were better, but still sluggish, compared to Lightroom. I didn't like Lightroom's modular setup at first, but not that I've used it for a while, and for my needs, it outclasses Aperture across the board. I doubt that'll change anytime soon.

Stick around, Aperture

For competition's sake, I hope that Aperture stays in the game to keep pressure on Adobe to continue innovating this field. Lightroom is so quick and easy to use whether it be easy dust removal or cloning out huge portions of an image or extremely useful local adjustments such as a grad nd tool and brush. I have about 100k images catalog including 10k local, in process images and the rest on an external Drobo unit.

Mac lover.

I am a photographer and a Mac fan. There's a reason Aperture is down to 6% market share. It's unnecessarily complex, too slow and needs a slew of plug-ins to be worth the effort. You may find a few fans here that use and like it, but most of the time it's because they've never used Lightroom.

I found Lightroom to be so much better than Ap it was absurd.
Ap was so unbelievably slow I was amazed. I tried it out on 4 machines and it was a dog on each one. Lr is markedly faster. I can apply 10 adjustments to 800 files and continue with only a few pauses to slow me down. I can go back and look at the history of any image and tweak or remove things I did to them with ease.
In Ap the beachball would be up for every dumb little thing.

Apple, you seriously dropped the ball. I'm a pro and I don't take kindly to being treated as a knee-jerk consumer. The total silence between versions or upgrades has decimated your user base. Nobody trusts you to be serious about this app.
The talk of adding consumer grade (ie: rubbish) 'features' such as Faces to a pro app like Aperture is just laughable.
You think I have time to mess around with tagging people's faces? Shooting 1000-3000 images a week?
Have you even consulted more than 3 pro photographers!?!
Do sports shooters need Faces?? Portrait photographers? Wedding photographers?
We're not consumers. We expect your apps to kick Adobe's tail.
Pros want 3 things: Speed, power and flexibility. And then more speed!

(Yes, Lr does lack organization, so here it is:
Burn DVDs of the original RAW files as backup.
Create a folder, the date in this format, and the client name:
2009-09-19 SmithJones Wedding.
Now all your shoots will be in date order. Inside make a folder to import the RAW files into and one for jpg exports or whatever.
To preserve your changes in Lr export each shoot as a Lr catalog and back that up somewhere.
Simple.)

My predictions:
Apple will trot out Ap3 next year. By then its share will be 3%.
It will include Faces and Places which will be its keynote features most mentioned by journalists.
It will be marketed as being twice as fast but in practice be only 20% faster. Journalists will note that the beachball doesn't show up as much.
Adobe will beat it to the punch with Lr3, which will eat Ap3's lunch.
Ap3 will require Snow Leopard.
Lr3 will run on 6 year old G4 Powerbooks running Tiger.

The single biggest disappointment here is that Apple is floundering in a market it should outright dominate. Nowhere is this more of a surprise than in the photography field. Aperture should be a compelling reason for pro shooters to blow good money on a MacBook Pro, instead it's a laughingstock. Pros listen, they ask other pros and get opinions. On Ap the consensus is clear; it's a $200 version of iPhoto. Apple is just too happy paying the big time guys like Derrick Story to get the news.

Aperture 2 Performance

I switched over to shooting RAW files a few months ago and noticed Aperture took a big hit in performance when flipping between pictures. Shot on a Pentax K20D, the RAW files are anywhere between 10-15 MB per piece and the hit was noticeable.

I'm downloading Lightroom 2 Trial right now and going to give it a work out to see if the same issues exist or not; one thing I know I wish Aperture did have was the Curves dialog box...